My Country, 'Tis of Thee

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"My Country, 'Tis of Thee," also known as "America," is an American patriotic song. The melody comes from the British national anthem, God Save the Queen and the German "Kaiserhymne". The same melody is the national anthem of Liechtenstein and has served as an anthem for Denmark, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland.

The lyrics to "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" were written in 1831 by Reverend Samuel Francis Smith of Boston's Park Street Church while at the Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. The song served as a de facto national anthem for much of the 19th century.

Lyrics

My Country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring.

My native country, thee,

Land of the noble free,

Thy name I love.

I love thy rocks and rills,

Thy woods and templed hills;

My heart with rapture fills

Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees

Sweet freedom's song.

Let mortal tongues awake;

Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong.

(In one of the original texts, the fifth and sixth lines are transposed and slightly altered, reading: "Let all that breathes partake;/Let mortal tongues awake.")

Our fathers' God, to Thee,

Author of liberty,

To Thee we sing.

Long may our land be bright

With freedom's holy light;

Protect us by Thy might,

Great God, our King! A-men.

One verse, crossed out by Smith in original manuscripts, is generally omitted. Originally the third verse, it reads:

No more shall tyrants here

With haughty steps appear

And soldier bands.

No more shall tyrants dread

Above the patriot dead;

No more our blood be shed

By alien hands.

Martin Luther King quoted this song during his "I Have A Dream" speech.

Ani Difranco referred to this song ironically in her song "Tis Of Thee", which includes the line, "My country 'tis of thee, to take shots at each other on talk show TV."

A song supporting women's suffrage, "The New America," is a spin-off of this song. It reflects a common suffrage argument--that giving women the vote simply fulfilled the promise of 1776.

External link

• Review of a book about the song from the Journal of American History

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